India v/s New Zealand | Shikhar Dhawan: The Expendable

India's Shikhar Dhawan is going through a lean patch and the way things have unfolded in the past few days do him no favour.

At a time when doubts were created in n his mind with the selectors recalling Gautam Gambhir into the Test squad as a replacement for injured KL Rahul, Dhawan was putting in extra minutes in the nets, particularly in the two days leading up to second Test here.

Some were of the opinion that it would be unfair on Dhawan if the 34-year-old Gambhir, back in the Test set-up after two years, played ahead of him.

Dhawan was left out of the 11 for the first Test in Kanpur simply for want of runs. With no extra runs in between Kanpur and Kolkata Tests and a couple of serious net sessions, Kohli backed Dhawan one last time while keeping out the veteran Gambhir.

If one were to keep Gambhir out of the 11, the selectors might as well have groomed a young opener, say Karun Nair, Mayank Agarwal or even Manish Pandey and given him the Test-match experience while warming the bench.

Dhawan has not made the most of the opportunities given to him, something like what a Pujara does – score big hundreds in domestic cricket whenever the opportunity arises, or score useful runs including Test match fifties and 100s whenever the team is really in need. Like on Friday here.

After seeing off the initial five deliveries from Trent Boult, who extracted good bounce and angled the ball away from the left-hander, he pushed the final delivery of the first over to covers for a single. With Dhawan retaining strike and facing up to express right-armer Matt Henry, playing his first Test of the series and fifth of his career, he played a cut only to find himself chopping it on to his stumps, ending a testing 6-minute, 10-ball stay.

Dhawan has gone 13 Test innings without a century since his back-to-back centuries, 173 and 134 against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, respectively, last year. And, he has only one half-century since then.

Dhawan's walk back to the pavilion was painful, searching for answers as to when his dry run will end and when runs would flow thick and fast from his blade. All is not lost though, as there is a second innings, if and only if the New Zealand team does not crumble to an innings defeat.

Perhaps, Kohli should have played Gambhir, who has the backing of runs in domestic cricket including the recent Duleep Trophy while Dhawan is woefully short of it. Now, it is expected that Dhawan will go back to Delhi Ranji Trophy team.